How do I find study material at UNISA?

Last reviewed: September 24, 2026 · Markdown version

Inside each module site on myUnisa there is a link called Official Study Material, and that is where the tutorial letters and study guides are. UNISA's own orientation course for new students says so in one line: "One of the first places you should go when starting a new module is the Official Study Material page to download the tutorial letters of the module" (Lesson 10: How do I view the official study material of a module?, read 24 September 2026). That lesson belongs to CCA-010, Basic Skills in Using myModules on myUnisa, on UNISA's myStudentSkillsHub, which opens with guest access. It is the source for the steps below.

Getting to the module first

myModules is the part of myUnisa where each module has its own site. UNISA's lesson on module content describes the route: "you will need to click on the myModules button, which is at the top of your dashboard", and the drop-down that opens lists your courses — with the reminder that "This will only show all the modules that you are enrolled in" (Lesson 8: How do I access my module content?, read 24 September 2026). Click the module name and you are on that module's course page.

That enrolment note is the first thing to check if a module is missing. A module you have applied for but that is not yet on your record will not appear in that list.

Then the material itself

On the module page, "Click on the Official Study Material link in the left navigation to open the official study material."
Download what is there. UNISA's lesson states: "You can download all your Official Study Material in PDF format for offline access."
Open Tutorial Letter 101 before anything else. In UNISA's words it "will provide you with all the course information you will need in terms of prescribed books, assignments and how the module will be assessed."

If your registration is not finalised yet

There is a separate route for this, and it is easy to miss because it sits in an announcement rather than in the module site. UNISA's announcement says that once you are registered "you can access your material on myUnisa on your module site", and that before then "you can still download your study material" through a link to UNISA's myAdmin tool (Download your study material while you wait for your registration to be finalised or your study material to be delivered, read 24 September 2026). That announcement carries a publish date of 2023/01/18, so treat the link as something to confirm on myUnisa rather than a permanent address.

What UNISA's pages leave out

Three things people usually want to know are not in the pages we read (Lesson 10: How do I view the official study material of a module?, Lesson 8: How do I access my module content?, and the myUnisa announcement Download your study material while you wait for your registration to be finalised or your study material to be delivered, all read 24 September 2026). The lesson does not say how long material stays on a module site after the module ends, so we would not count on it being there next year. It does not say whether every item in the list is a single PDF or whether some modules add other formats. And the screenshots in the orientation course are labelled "myModules 2022", so the buttons you see may be named or placed a little differently now.

A filing habit that pays off at exam time

UNISA's lesson describes Tutorial Letter 101 as the letter that carries a module's course information, so if each of your modules issues one, a semester of four modules can hand you four documents with the same title. Whatever name the download arrives with, our suggestion — and it is only ours — is to put the module code at the front of the file name as you save it, and keep one folder per module. When an assignment question sends you back to "the tutorial letter", you will know which one it means without opening all of them.

If you save them to a phone, it helps to know where the downloaded PDF actually lands.